Ideal chemical policy

An ideal chemical policy should have the following elements:

- Safety reviews for ALL chemicals (including chemicals already on the market and new chemicals before they can enter the market)

- Allow the EPA or other similar government agencies to ban/phase out chemicals that have human or environmental health risks in a timely fashion

- Set judicially enforceable deadlines for decisions (just fining companies is not enough!)

- Provide enough funding to test the 80,000 chemicals currently on the EPA's list of chemicals

- Fund research for safer alternatives to harmful chemicals currently in use

- Require comprehensive safety data for all chemicals on the market

Comments

  1. Terrianne GOctober 21, 2018 at 5:28 PM

    I like your suggestions, especially setting enforceable deadlines for decisions. I also think the funding for the research for the chemicals is an importance resource too.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Household Products

The household products I looked up were dish soap and disinfecting wipes. The statements from the National Library of Medicine's Household Products Database are below. Method Dish Soap - "The product contains no substances which at their given concentration, are considered to be hazardous to health." Clorox Disinfecting Wipes - "This product is not considered hazardous by the 2012 OSHA Hazard Communication Standard (29 CFR 1910.1200)" Overall I found this database a little harder to use/understand than the EWG database for personal care products. I was a little surprised that the clorox wipes were not considered hazardous. My suspicion was that they were going to have a negative rating, but I was glad to find out that they were not as bad as I expected. While I could be making my own cleaning products using vinegar and baking soda, based on the database ratings I think I am making pretty good choices for my cleaning products and do not need to change at ...
Read more

Fragrance Free Policy

Fragrances in personal care products have been linked to a wide range of health issues from asthma, migraines, eye and skin irritation, allergies to cancer and reproductive issues. Fragrance is often found in lotions, perfumes, soaps, shampoos, makeup and deodorant. Most people use at least one of these personal care products on a daily basis, with the majority of people using many items each day containing fragrance.  An effective fragrance-free policy would be very difficult to design and implement. I know many hospitals have fragrance-free policies, but I am not certain how they enforce the policy. When I worked at a hospital, I was told not to wear perfume  or any personal products with fragrance, but I noticed that many people still did wear some fragrance.  I think the key to a fragrance-free policy would be to educate all employees. First, educate employees on what is considered a fragrance. Then, educate them on the potential harmful effects the fragrance ...
Read more

Obesogens

Image
Living in Northern California, we are lucky to have a lot of locally grown food and much of it is in season for much of the year. The Harvest Calendar below shows what is available by month in the Bay Area.  I think serving seasonal/local foods in hospitals is a good idea, but I don't know how feasible it is. In California I think this would be much easier than in a lot of other states.  I had not heard of obesogens before reading this article. It makes a lot of sense that consuming these chemicals would be bad for us and could alter metabolic processes and cause people to gain weight. I think more research should definitely done around this topic since obesity has become an epidemic not just in the United States but around the world. I chose monosodium glutamate (also known as MSG) as a potential obesogen to research. MSG is a food additive and is often used as a flavor enhancer. While it seems many studies have been done testing the effects of MSG, it is diffic...
Read more